Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday May 16, 2013 @06:19PM
from the welcome-to-the-machine dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "But at this year's Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced that it has a plan to make Google Plus users more engaged, courtesy of new features backed by a handful of data-analytics tricks. Google Plus postings now feature Google-generated hashtags that, when clicked, direct the user to related content from across their network. From a backend-infrastructure perspective, that sort of thing leans heavily on Google's semantic analysis and the ability to make the right connections between various pieces of data. Google Plus will also automatically highlight certain photos out of dozens or even hundreds of shots. Say you went on vacation to India and took some photos of your significant other in front of the Taj Mahal; Google Plus will leverage its database of information to recognize that as a prominent landmark and pluck those photos out of the pile as 'special.' In the words of that posting on the Google+ Blog: 'Your darkroom is now a Google data center.' Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus? That's the big question. Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?"

As part of the big roll out of these changes, a lot of google chat users have discovered their most frequently used contacts have been automatically "Blocked on Google+ [google.com]", despite not themselves not having Google+ accounts. People have been left with no option other than to sign up to Google+ to access their "Blocked" circle to see what contacts have been blocked, and unblock them.

This would explain why my chat list is missing a few regulars. I knew something was up when my phone was bugging me about updating to Hangouts this morning (never EVER set your phone to autoupdate anything!) Whats funny is none of those people show up as blocked in the GMail Talk client like that forum post says, I'm likely blocked on their side and the distribution of people seems random. Funny that back in the day if AOL (remember them?) tried this crap with AIM, people would be howling. Google does this

There is a fundamental difference to your example. When you visit a restaurant, you as the diner are the customer, the restaurant is the supplier and the product is the food and service. I think you misundertand the Google service user's relationship to Google. The service user isn't the customer. Google encourages the user to provide personal data in return for access to a service. That data then becomes Google's product which Google then sells on businesses and organisations - it's actual customers. It is the data customers who have the customer - supplier relationship.

That data then becomes Google's product which Google then sells on businesses and organisations

Google will NEVER sell data of its customers...not because of any moral code, but because it is simply not profitable. They sell *targeted* advertising space on services offered for free, Like TV...or newspapers. Its why Google make Billions.

Google will NEVER sell data of its customers...not because of any moral code, but because it is simply not profitable. They sell *targeted* advertising space on services offered for free, Like TV...or newspapers. Its why Google make Billions.

Exactly how do you think they "target" that advertising? They use algorithms applied to the data supplied by the users through their interaction with the Google services including search history, chats, contact lists etc. to categorise what the users' and their friends' and contacts' interests are, what socio-economic category they fall into, and where they are geographically. That data is the Google product and that is what they sell.

You are insinuating that the collected data leaves Google's servers and enters the advertiser's servers.

It does not.

Google's business model is: give ad banner to Google, fill out a form specifying the desired demographic targets, done. Google then stores the banner on their server and their server sends out the banner when a user matching the chosen demographics views a page with Google backed ads on it.

I am insinuating nothing of the kind. If you read what I have said and what you quoted I have not stated that Google passes personal user details on directly to the customer. That categorised data becomes the product which Google sells via their advertising program. As you have said, they sell targeted advertising and without user data supplied via interaction with their services there would be no product for them to sell. I would be interested to know how you know exactly what Google does with the data the

There is a difference between "we need this" and "this is a useful feature". As a species, we don't _need_ to buy furniture that someone else has built, but I'm sure most of us prefer it over growing our own trees, mining our own iron ore, extracting our own iron, making our own tools, and building our own furniture. For one thing, we'll have more time to devote to doing other things. This is progress, man. Why all the hate?

This!Google is getting very creepy.I know it's all done by mindless computer code, but if mindless code can figure out so many aspects of my existence image what could be done when some rogue government agency demands all of there "analytics" under some secret warrant or fishing letter.

Google seems to be heading towards a future where if you don't buy into Google+, you don't get to use Google's applications. It's like during their two most recent rounds of killing things off - they announce all these projects that are going away, then say "but we're introducing lots of new stuff"... all of which is related to Google+.

It's weird to say this about such a huge company, but they seem to be getting desperate.

Horse shit! You don't need an app to ask you "Do you want to talk to Joe?". You either want to talk to Joe or don't, and if you are dependent on a reminder to talk to people it's time to get off the computer. You don't need a computer to index your photo's, but yes certain aspects of an auto-indexer could be nice. Except what if you don't want your pictures shared to the world and searchable by everyone? You know, private memories of Grandma's last big trip and such.

actually, this article is creepy. being posted via a pseudonym for a known shitty slashdot editor, they only use that nym when they're posting "google is questionable" or heavily favoring microsoft type troll articles.

It's not even a remote surprise. You shouldn't expect reasoned and valid criticism of google, just bashing in said articles. This has been covered before on slashdot previously.

actually, this article is creepy. being posted via a pseudonym for a known shitty slashdot editor, they only use that nym when they're posting "google is questionable" or heavily favoring microsoft type troll articles.

No one loves the messenger who brings bad news. -- Sophocles.

Pseudonyms - that's a very interesting thing to criticise. I take it you weren't christened "poetmatt". The Matthew seems quite likely, but hardly narrows your identity down much. For sure my name is not Basil Brush. Slashdot culture is one of pseudonames. Maybe 1 in a hundred use their real name.

But that's not why it's interesting. It's interesting because the great corporate Peeping Tom, Google agrees with you. They originally demanded that you

It might sound like that, but when you consider the broad spectrum of things they're including as "active", it really isn't.

+1'ing apps in Google Play? Really? So everyone who's ever rated an app in the iTunes App Store is a user of Apple's social network? Everyone who's posted to Youtube, even if they've never created a G+ profile, is a user of G+ now? Everyone who uses gmail gets counted?

I've got no G+ account due to the naming policy crap, but I have gmail and I've posted on youtube. I bet they count me.

Is that "fact" like the three copies of Windows 8 that Microsoft counts me as having "bought"?

I bought three 802.11AC routers from Newegg and automagically had three copies of Win8 added to my cart which were included in the price, but also had an automatic rebate that was applied immediately. That was just before MS came out with the surprisingly large sales figures. I was only one of many.

Just because it's said by a company you rather like doesn't mean it's not misleading. For example, how much credence would you give something similar said by Apple?

For example, how much credence would you give something similar said by Apple?

Actually Apple are pretty good, they post figures for in there financial statements in a nice table every year for hardware. Ignoring the fact that they claim a sale when it is a shipped product. In reality they don't really produce anything apart from a narrow range of electronics devices.

Microsoft do all kinds of things from raising prices; selling in bulk to OEM's, but since they are a monopoly. The real figures are in hard drive companies failing...Dell this week announced further bad move, but on the w

When G+ started out, it was clean, fast-loading, reliable, and did exactly what it was supposed to do and no more. You know... like Google used to be. I had real hopes that G+:FB::Google:Yahoo.

Every change since then has made it uglier, slower, and buggier; with the latest interface changes they've not only caught up to but actually surpassed Facebook in the amount of irritating crap they shove at the user. Google may be able to coast on people's affection for them as a search engine (especially when the competition is Bing) but they're going to find it increasingly difficult to break into new markets if all they do is ape the worst behavior of the existing market leader--which in this case emphatically includes "adding a bunch of new 'features' when the ones we already have are kind of crap."

I still use Google as my primary search engine, Gmail as my e-mail provider, and Google Maps when I want to figure out how to go somewhere I haven't been before. Nothing they've done since then has provided any reason to switch from whatever solution I'm currently using. And I really don't think I'm alone in this.

The current version is all but unusable on a 1.6ghz Atom netbook and grinds my current also Atom desktop machine.. It's go so many bars that vanish and show up, uses so much CPU that typing pegs the system and uses so much realestate that there's less than a quarter of the whole screen for content.. And so much clicking to access things(When things are not automaticly popping up because my cursor strayed somewere).

Their search engine is great, but G+.. well.. Just because it now mattches the Android/iOS App/dosen't make it a automaticly good thing/.

I still use Google as my primary search engine, Gmail as my e-mail provider, and Google Maps when I want to figure out how to go somewhere I haven't been before. Nothing they've done since then has provided any reason to switch from whatever solution I'm currently using. And I really don't think I'm alone in this.

If there was an alternative to Google that wasn't total crap, I'd be using it. As it is, they still try to connect searches you make to a real identity by buying personal data from the major ISPs to tie your name to an IP address, etc. I've found myself having to only access it from Tor or other proxy networks to keep its privacy-invading "features" out of my web experience. And it seems like every month they roll out a new way of trying to screw with that, from "your computer may be sending automated queri

After switching to DDG for my default browser search field, I've developed a (unfortunate) reflex to prefix every search by '!g' (forward search to Google). DDG uses Bing for its own search back end --- which doesn't actually seem to be that good at figuring out what I'm looking for. Google still seems better at "reading my mind" --- convenient for search results, but disquieting on the "creepy evil what are you manipulating me into" front.

I still use Google as my primary search engine, Gmail as my e-mail provider, and Google Maps when I want to figure out how to go somewhere I haven't been before. Nothing they've done since then has provided any reason to switch from whatever solution I'm currently using. And I really don't think I'm alone in this.

Hotmail used to be my web based e-mailer yet I can't access it for some reason. My HotMail account is active and Istill use it, as I had forwarded my Hotmail to Gmail. Hotmail charged for POP'ing my e-mail, Gmail lets me do it for free,so I never have to open a browser.

Checking to see if anything had changed I tried hotmail again, and got in, first time in years!This reply has actually been a

Agree. Small comment, whilst I still love Google maps, Bing maps has really improved. Where I live, for example, (ouside USA), it's now better than Google maps, with more up to date aerial photos. Still no 'street view', of course.

When G+ started out, it was clean, fast-loading, reliable, and did exactly what it was supposed to do and no more. You know... like Google used to be. I had real hopes that G+:FB::Google:Yahoo.

That might be true, I don't know, I wasn't one of the pre-adoption G+ users. But I can tell you that since G+ has been public, it has always been slower than facebook. The initial page load takes longer, posting a comment takes longer, posting a page takes longer, everything takes longer and as far as I can tell, it always has.

Of course, this latest facelift to G+ is pretty much the worst "upgrade" of a google project ever. They really increased everything bad and ruined everything good. They're wasting eve

That might be true, I don't know, I wasn't one of the pre-adoption G+ users. But I can tell you that since G+ has been public, it has always been slower than facebook. The initial page load takes longer, posting a comment takes longer, posting a page takes longer, everything takes longer and as far as I can tell, it always has.

Now that I think about it, yeah, I guess I was one of the beta users. What the hell, I tried that with Gmail, years ago, and that worked out pretty well...

The pre-public-release G+ was kind of odd-looking, but my God it was fast. I'm really sad about how quickly it went downhill.

There's already making automatic decisions that harm their searches. For instance, autocomplete is now useless since it automatically gets you to "Are you feeling lucky?" and there's no way to turn it off. Worse yet, there are times when I automatically keep autocompleting by accident and I keep getting hit by "Are you feeling lucky?".

I use g+ regularly (I know, insert joke about being the only person on the net to do that here). I've liked it, for the most part.

But yesterday? Man. That new interface went live and how I have three tiny columns of posts. Which itself might be okay, except they're in no discernible order whatsoever. New stuff I haven't seen yet is buried off the screen, but there's six things from two days ago still hanging around at the top. Sometimes new things appear in a visible spot, sometimes they don't. I don't know why I need three columns when each one is so small that it's barely telling me anything, and looks like it was designed for a mobile screen. (The iPad app has a similar layout but has much saner ordering and uses 1 or 2 columns depending on the size of the item. It works far better.)

There's an option to turn it back to a single column, but the column stays the same size and now 2/3 of the screen is totally empty while I have to click to expand everything to see more than 30 words and scroll down like crazy. At least in that mode it seems to be ordered correctly.

The main reaction in my g+ circles to the update was confusion. It wasn't even the usual "change is bad" reaction. People were just lost in how they were supposed to read this new layout and find the new stuff in a simple way.

It's funny because g+ started off with a simpler, easier to use page than Facebook had. That's gone and reversed itself now. I really don't get what Google's thinking. As of right now, I'd actually rank the usability of Facebook more highly.

So does Microsoft. They gave us Windows 8. How's that working out for them? (Considering they're now backtracking and putting boot to desktop and the start menu back in because the market isn't a big fan of what their UI design experts put out.)

I'm not really sure how it's an "uninformed criticism", when I'm using it. It's entirely informed. They moved the new things that I haven't seen and want to see off the screen, and kept old stuff that I've already seen and don't want to see again at the top. That's useful to me... why?

But yes, I'm sure that since a Ph.D came up with it, surely it's awesome and we should all bow down to it's greatness. So what if I have to scroll through old stuff to find new stuff, or have the alternative view of a metric fuckton of empty whitespace with a tiny list of content in the middle. I'm sure I'm just not seeing why that's actually a good thing because I'm not smart enough.

No, they're not. They're bringing back the start button. Instead of there being an invisible hot corner or hidden clickable area to access the Start screen while in the desktop, there's now a clear button to do so. But the start menu itself is as dead as Microsoft can make it - despite the fact that restoring the menu even if it's "old-fashioned" would alleviate nearly all the major concerns people have with the fucking OS.

Have you asked yourself: do you actually know anything about user interface design? Google employs Ph.D.s by the dozen. Maybe you need to stop offering uninformed criticisms? Google doesn't do these things randomly or on a whim. These changes were debated, thought over by smart people, and then implemented. It's like Roger Ebert vs. the opinion of J. Random Moviegoer here.

I guess I'm not experienced enough in UI design to be allowed to express an opinion either (at least, according to you), but I'll share my opinion anyway: I don't like the multi-column G+ design either, because I find it tiresome to shift my attention back and forth between columns, and keep track of where I am in each column.

I also find G+ slow (even on my fast CPU) and cluttered. I find the text is too small and if I zoom it two levels (to make it large enough to easily read), the rightmost column partially renders under the Hangouts column.

Page up and page down don't work quite right a large fraction of the time (try it), and I hate it when web sites pin content (if I scroll, I want everything to scroll).

I miss the old Google when UI designs were simple, intuitive, uncluttered, and fast. They seem to be junking up all their UIs (including Gmail).

Go read The Design of Everyday Things. Designers have, in multiple fields, consistently used their impressive educations and experience to produce systems which were demonstrably less usable and less well-liked than the things they replaced. It's very easy for people to fall prey to that, and "experts" are not immune...

Have you asked yourself: do you actually know anything about user interface design?

If you have to know anything about "user interface design" to actually USE a designed interface, you have failed. The whole point of the field is to make something so obvious to use that it seems like no design was involved.

Google employs Ph.D.s by the dozen.

I've known a lot of grad students, and always thought this was the most insane predilection Google had in hiring. Grad students are the least practical people on earth;

What a fucking clueless moron you are.
You are seriously telling us that some UI Phd knows more about what I and OP like, than we do ourselves? The new interface sucks and I hate it, as do many others. Coming here to tell us that we are wrong about how we feel is disingenious on such a level, it is really quite astonishing.

Have you asked yourself: do you actually know anything about user interface design? Google employs Ph.D.s by the dozen. Maybe you need to stop offering uninformed criticisms? Google doesn't do these things randomly or on a whim. These changes were debated, thought over by smart people, and then implemented. It's like Roger Ebert vs. the opinion of J. Random Moviegoer here.

they employ two dozen ui specialists and as a consequence have two dozens ui's on the ui.

Google has shown that it doesn't have programmers that know a damn thing about human-computer interaction time and time again (see YouTube). NIH also is alive and well at that place too. I thought Apple was bad! People tend to forget that the original Google+ rollout was a mess that looked like some random manager said "hey, looks good enough, get it live ASAP to make the CEO happy." Remember, just because you have a Ph. D. (or any random assortment of important looking letters after your name) doesn't mean

Ya, it's stupid. They've let phone design interfere the browser design I think. I'd dump it but it's the only thing to maintain some links to people I know (well, linkedin too, but I already overuse that to maintain non-professional connections).

But it gets less fascinating as soon as you try and find that all these automatisms misfire as often as not. Google feels more and more like a big toy store that lets you play with all the toys for free if you allow them to go through your pockets while you're playing.

Yahoo was the mostest winningest search platform for years, until they implemented pop-up advertising. Users immediately jumped ship to Google because it's fast, clean and accurate. Sticking to the 'lean mean searching machine' is what keeps Google on top. Others try to copy it and they fail.

Google shouldn't be trying to out-Facebook Facebook, they should be creating a 'lean mean social machine'.. because that's what they're good at.

Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?

It's not necessary to counter Facebook, Facebook will do that themselves. Facebook is already getting whipped for privacy violations. All Google needs is a 'lean mean social machine' ie. a simple social platform which respects the user's privacy. Quit adding knuckleheaded features and focus on privacy and security. The short game is shiny widgets, the long game is for the win.

We're really digging the bottom of the barrel as an industry if we're putting energy into doing analytics on vacation photos to identify which ones contain landmarks. The way I see it, we've already accomplished the big things in computing (word processing, spreadsheets, image editing, etc.) and now all that's left is the constant development of minutiae.

The people at Google believe that if something can be quantified and identified, it MUST mean sometime. In the example given in the article summary, the only reason Google would assume that certain shots are "special" is that it happens to have the capability to identify certain locations, so OBVIOUSLY those would matter. Right? No, not at all. Google doesn't know what I want. Google doesn't know what I think is special. Google doesn't know what I think. The ONLY way it can have any hope of even making inte

Google would assume that certain shots are "special" is that it happens to have the capability to identify certain locations, so OBVIOUSLY those would matter. Right? No, not at all.

What the automanagement of photos by giving them appropriate tags? The arrogance, and remember this is just one of 41 new features, including auto gif creation, or stick together pics to make a panorama.

Say you went on vacation to India and took some photos of your significant other in front of the Taj Mahal; Google Plus will leverage its database of information to recognize that as a prominent landmark and pluck those photos out of the pile as 'special.'

Great, just what you need: a megacorporation to filter all your memories into cliched copies of a zillion other tourists' Taj Mahal photos. No need for building special memories of your own, with the person you're with --- that one shot, in some bland and unmemorable location, that would bring back with perfect clarity some jewel of laughter shared with your significant other: scores too low on Google Reality Rank Algorithm. But you can replace all your pitiful personal experiences with the postcard-perfect

Envision future Google - when you take a picture of a famous landmark like the eiffel tower, Google proceeds on a makeover that fixes lighting, removes rain, eliminates any trace of blur by using details from a million other photos to re-texture your image... so your picture looks exactly the same as every other picture of that landmark uploaded to Google.

So when I'm looking at photos of a loved ones' visit to the Taj Mahal, Google says that they're going to push *lots* of other people's photos of the Taj Mahal at me.

Because I really want to look at the Taj Mahal. Endlessly.

No you dipshits! I want to look at my loved ones enjoying their holiday! I don't give a flying f*** through a rolling donut about the holiday snaps of strangers, no matter how good, how artsy, how quirky, or how many there are with vaguely amusing pictures of sodding cats!

Google is really missing the whole point of Facebook (Facebook tends to miss it too). It's not about whizzy features, it's about interacting with your friends. I don't use Google+ because few of my friends do. I really don't want to have Google+ OR Facebook finding new junk to stuff in front of me. I want to find out what my friends are up to. It's better than emailing stupid jokes around.

I suspect too many Google staffers are never leaving the Googleplex anymore.

Google's broken analytics keep telling me I would enjoy Drudge and Limbaugh apps, when I know damn well that I won't. To be fair, though, it's based on what's popular in my area. Other things "popular in [my] area" of Denver include local channel 7 affiliate apps from fucking Michigan and the like.